The invention described herein may be manufactured and used by or for the Government of the United States of America for government purposes without the payment of any royalties therefor.
The invention relates in general to grenade type munitions and in particular to a grenade type munition comprising Explosively Driven Impactors (EDIs).
A need exists for a biological and chemical agent defeat warhead. The warhead would enable the attack of chemical and biological agents located within semi-hardened or hardened storage and manufacturing facilities. The warhead would be delivered by a precision air, ship or submarine weapon system, with minimum collateral damage to the surrounding area. To destroy biological and chemical agents, the agents must first be released from their containers. The EDI grenades are designed to rupture containers to release the chemical and/or biological agent contents with minimal collateral damage due to low overpressure from the grenades. Once the agents are released, the Agent Defeat High Temperature Thermal Radiator (HTTR) payload will destroy the agents. The EDI grenade can also be used by individual soldiers as a hand grenade.
The EDI grenades for agent defeat application are thermally fuzed to operate when a pre-determined room temperature is reached. The thermal fuzing is required for agent defeat application because to minimize collateral damage, the room temperature needs to be high enough to create a lethal environment for biological agents before the agent containers are ruptured. The EDI grenades can be alternatively fuzed for other applications such as for anti-personnel. Other fuzing methods for an EDI grenade include time delay, pressure sensing and impact fuzing.
If existing grenades such as the M67, M61 or MK3A2 were used for agent defeat application, the collateral damage would be much higher due to its greater over-pressure characteristic. These hand grenades do not have the penetration capability of an EDI grenade.